‘What Jennifer Did’: Netflix doc explores shocking Ont. murder-for-hire case

A murder-for-hire case that shocked residents in Markham, Ont., virtually 15 years in the past is getting the Netflix therapy, highlighting the decade-long ruse Jennifer Pan undertook to please her strict mother and father — a plot that finally left considered one of them lifeless.

What Jennifer Did is the newest feature-length Netflix documentary to hit the streaming platform (on April 10 in Canada), inspecting the early years of Jennifer’s life, her forbidden star-crossed-lovers’ romance and her motivation to rent hitmen to kill her mother and father.

Defined under is the twisted internet of lies and deceit that left a mom lifeless and a household torn aside.

Excessive expectations, large stress

Born to Vietnamese refugees Huei Hann and Bich Ha Pan, Jennifer felt large stress to excel in her research and extracurricular actions and, for years, did simply that.

Her mother and father, the basic instance of a Canadian immigrant success story, constructed a affluent life for his or her household and anticipated their daughter and son, Felix, to increase on their success.

Jennifer was a straight-A scholar at Mary Ward Catholic Secondary College in Markham and an completed piano participant, and had her sights set on turning into an Olympic determine skater. By all accounts, she was thriving academically and socially.

Her Olympic desires had been dashed within the eighth grade, when she suffered an damage that sidelined her determine skating profession. From there, it was a sluggish downward spiral.

The self-abuse begins

In keeping with a bit written by considered one of Jennifer’s schoolmates for Toronto Life journal, a torn knee ligament was a critical blow to Jennifer’s self-confidence. Her desires of skating on a nationwide stage had been dashed and he or she started self-mutilating by reducing small slices into her forearms.

As her commencement from center faculty approached, she absolutely anticipated to be named valedictorian and obtain a handful of medals for her scholastic efforts. When neither of these issues got here to fruition she was devastated, however appeared to brush it off and conceal behind her “completely satisfied masks.”

“An in depth observer might need seen that Jennifer appeared off, however I by no means did,” Karen Okay. Ho wrote for Toronto Life.

“I found later that Jennifer’s pleasant, assured persona was a façade, beneath which she was affected by emotions of inadequacy, self-doubt and disgrace. When she didn’t win first place at skating competitions, she tried to cover her devastation from her mother and father, not wanting so as to add fear to their disappointment.”

Over the course of the following two years, her grades started to slide. She went from the highest of her class to posting marks within the 70s, at finest.

Not wanting to fret and disappoint her mother and father, she started to lie. Armed with a glue stick and scissors, she altered her report playing cards, forging them with As to maintain up appearances.

In the meantime, her protecting mother and father stored shut tabs on their daughter’s motion via the world. She was forbidden from common teenage rites of passage like dances and events. Sleepovers had been uncommon, and after they did occur she could be dropped off late at night time and picked up early the following morning.

A forbidden romance

In Grade 11, and effectively on her path to deceiving her mother and father, Jennifer started courting Daniel Wong. He was within the grade above and the 2 performed within the faculty band collectively.

That 12 months, whereas on a band journey to Europe, Jennifer suffered an bronchial asthma assault. Wong was there to assist her via the panic, and Jennifer was grateful for the care and a spotlight he paid to her. They started courting that summer time.

Wong was, by most accounts, a respectful child however was dabbling in low-level drug dealing. At one level, as a teen, he was charged with trafficking after police discovered a substantial quantity of marijuana in his automobile.

As a result of she knew her mother and father would by no means approve of a boyfriend, Jennifer stored the connection secret. In the meantime, she was accepted to Ryerson College, now Toronto Metropolitan College, however failed calculus in her senior 12 months and the college withdrew its supply.

The lies deepen

Jennifer by no means informed her mother and father she wasn’t going to college. She doubled down on the lie and would take transit into downtown Toronto every weekday, holing up at public libraries to take notes from used biology and physics notebooks she thought could be related to the sciences program she was imagined to be attending.

She cast paperwork that mentioned she was receiving a mortgage for tuition and informed her dad she’d received a $3,000 scholarship.

After two years of maintaining her pretend-student charade, she informed her dad she’d been accepted into the College of Toronto pharmacology program. She satisfied her mother and father that she ought to spend three nights per week with a pal within the metropolis to chop down on a gruelling commute — after all, she stayed at Wong’s household residence as an alternative.

For one more two years, Jennifer stored up the lies. After 4 years, when it got here time to “graduate,” Jennifer faked an ideal transcript and informed her mother and father there weren’t sufficient tickets for them to attend her convocation.

An unravelling façade

Jennifer’s mother and father started to note one thing was amiss when their daughter started enthusiastically telling them a few new volunteer place on the blood testing lab at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Kids — a gig that might require late-night shifts on weekends.

Hann, ever-observant and thinking about his daughter’s profession trajectory, thought it was odd she wasn’t assigned a uniform or key fob to entry the hospital.

Involved, he insisted that he and Bich drive their daughter to the hospital sooner or later. As soon as she was out of the automobile, he informed his spouse to observe Jennifer. Panicked, she ran from her mom and hid out within the ER ready room till she was sure she had left.

The following day, Hann and Bich positioned a name to the pal their daughter claimed to be staying with within the metropolis. The pal admitted that Jennifer wasn’t there. After they confronted their daughter, Jennifer confessed. She informed them she had lied about graduating, had lied about volunteering on the hospital and, devastatingly for everybody, she informed them she had a boyfriend and had been sleeping over at his home.

Livid and decided to get his daughter again heading in the right direction, Hann took away her cellphone and laptop computer. He started checking her cellphone messages. They forbade her from leaving the home for 2 weeks.

Jennifer’s anger escalates

Jennifer’s mother and father finally granted her some small freedoms. She enrolled in a calculus course to lastly end her highschool credit and he or she was allowed to go away the home for piano classes.

However Jennifer was nonetheless sneaking out to see her boyfriend. One night time, her mother and father discovered her mattress empty and so they cracked down on their daughter once more, this time demanding that she apply to varsity and forbidding her from ever seeing Wong once more.

Wong, pissed off that Jennifer refused to maneuver out of her mother and father’ home and uninterested in having to sneak round, broke up along with her and started courting another person. She was heartbroken and determined to realize again her relationship, however felt like she needed to play by her mother and father’ guidelines and labored slowly to regain their belief.

Someday within the two years after she was caught sleeping over at Wong’s home, Jennifer rekindled her romance along with her ex-boyfriend.

Hatching a homicide plan

Nonetheless being watched carefully by her mother and pop, Wong produced a spare cellphone for Jennifer to speak with him, away from her mother and father’ prying eyes.

However the parental scrutiny and lack of privateness was nonetheless a serious sticking level of their relationship, to the purpose the place Jennifer and Wong additionally started toying with the concept of murdering her mother and father and amassing a $500,000 inheritance.

It was with the spare cellphone that Jennifer requested for a success to be placed on Bich and Han.

Over textual content, in 2010, Wong launched his girlfriend to considered one of his prison affiliate mates, Lenford Crawford, whom Jennifer claimed to know solely by the title “Homeboy.”

Crawford, over textual content, informed Jennifer he may kill her mother and father for $10,000. She agreed to the plan.

A harrowing name to police

On Nov. 8, Jennifer known as 911, frantically telling the dispatcher that armed gunmen had damaged into their residence, tied her up, demanded cash and shot each her mother and father.

Bich had been shot a number of occasions within the head and died immediately. Jennifer’s father, nonetheless, was nonetheless alive regardless of bullets to the shoulder and face.

At first, police appeared to purchase Jennifer’s story. However, 4 days later, Hann got here out of his coma and informed police that his daughter appeared to be acquainted and pleasant with the gunmen who had entered their residence. Remarkably, he remembered the whole lot from the night time of the assault, together with that his daughter’s arms weren’t tied behind her again like she had claimed on the 911 name.

A collection of interviews with police finally unravelled the reality — at the very least partially. Jennifer confessed to hiring three hitmen and leaving her residence’s entrance door unlocked, however informed police she had employed the lads to kill her.

Going via the digital proof within the case, police uncovered the same plan, 10 months earlier, that Jennifer deserted after realizing the particular person she had paid to kill her people had ditched her and brought off with the $1,500.

Jennifer was arrested in late November and two months later, in January of 2011, police had sufficient digital proof to arrest Wong, Crawford and the 2 different hitmen, David Mylvaganam and Eric Carty.

All 5 had been charged with first-degree homicide, tried homicide and conspiracy to commit homicide.

The trial, sentencing and attraction

The trial for Jennifer and the co-accused started in 2014 and stretched for practically 10 months.

On the stand, she informed the jury that she had two plans, however neither concerned killing her mom.

The primary plan was to have her father shot. When that didn’t work out, she needed to have herself killed by intruders. She informed the jury she thought each plans had been known as off.

She additionally informed the courtroom that her life was a fabrication and that she had betrayed her mother and father at virtually each flip for years.

“I used to be conflicted, I used to be confused, I used to be undecided what to do,” she mentioned. “A part of me needed to return clear. On the opposite facet, I knew coming down, it might carry such disgrace and embarrassment…. They’d be ostracized from the remainder of the household.”

When her lawyer requested her why she didn’t simply transfer out of her mother and father’ home, she mentioned she didn’t need to be and not using a household.

“I didn’t need them to desert me. I might be shamed if I moved out and I wasn’t married,” she mentioned.

On Dec. 13, 2014, Jennifer was discovered responsible of first-degree homicide. She was 28 years outdated on the time.

Three of the co-accused, Crawford, Mylvaganam and Wong, had been all discovered responsible of the identical prices for the loss of life of Bich. At sentencing, the decide ordered that each one 4 spend life in jail with no likelihood of parole for 25 years on the homicide conviction, and life for tried homicide. The sentences are being served concurrently.

(Carty was not current on the time resulting from his lawyer falling sick throughout the trial. Carty died inside a B.C. jail, the place he was serving time for an unrelated homicide, earlier than he may face trial for Bich’s loss of life.)

Jennifer’s household didn’t flip up for her sentencing, however in a written assertion to the courtroom, Hann mentioned his life had been shattered by his spouse’s loss of life and daughter’s crimes.

“I hope my daughter Jennifer thinks about what occurred to her household and may develop into a superb, trustworthy particular person sometime,” he wrote.

Jennifer’s authorized saga, it appears, will not be but over.

In March of 2023, the Court docket of Attraction for Ontario ordered new trials for the first-degree homicide convictions.

The trial decide erred by suggesting to the jury solely two believable eventualities for the assault — one wherein the plan was to homicide each mother and father and one other wherein the plan was to commit a house invasion and the mother and father had been shot in the middle of the theft, the courtroom mentioned.

However the trial decide ought to have given the jury second-degree homicide and manslaughter as different attainable verdicts in Bich’s loss of life, the attraction courtroom mentioned.

The jury may have additionally doubted there was a plan to kill Pan’s mom, however concluded there was a fairly foreseeable threat of harming her with the plan to kill Pan’s father, which might result in a manslaughter conviction, the courtroom wrote.

The Supreme Court docket of Canada is now within the means of figuring out if it would overview the case.

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With information from World Information’ Catherine McDonald and The Canadian Press

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‘What Jennifer Did,’ a documentary by Jenny Popplewell, is obtainable on Netflix on April 10.

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